Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'You don't believe me?'

'Christ, Allen, if I believed that story I'd be as nuts as you are. Come on, guy. You need help.'

'I was there, Mitch. I saw it. Sam Gleig went inside the elevator. And then the thing shot up and down. I watched the indicator panel. Bang!

Up it went like a rocket! Bang! Down it came again! The doors opened and there he was, lying on the floor. He might as well have been an egg in a cookie tin. And the fact still remains that Sam Gleig is dead and you don't have a plausible explanation.'

But by this time Mitch had arrived at an explanation that seemed to him to be very plausible. The man had the height, the weight and the strength. If anyone could have taken on Sam Gleig it was him. And with a bottle of whatever inside him, there was no telling what Grabel might have been capable of.

'You think your explanation is better?' Mitch snorted with contempt. 'I can't believe it's taken you all this time to think up a story like that. The elevator murdered him? Jesus, Allen. Anyway, what were you doing here in the first place? And why didn't you stick around and tell someone?'

'I wanted to fix Richardson.'

'What do you mean, fix him?'

'Him. His fucking building. The whole deal. Screw him. Screw the whole fucking program.'

Mitch paused, trying to understand the possible ramifications of what Grabel was saying, and finding his thoughts drawn back to the two policemen upstairs, and to clearing his own name.

'We'll get you a good attorney, Allen,' he said.

Grabel began to back away. Mitch grabbed at him.

'No you don't!' yelled Grabel. 'Leave me alone!'

The punch came from nowhere.

Mitch was vaguely aware of lying on the floor of the garage, feeling as if he had received a powerful electric shock. He heard the sound of receding footsteps, and then finally lost consciousness.

'Who the hell are you?'

Ray Richardson paused on the threshold of the boardroom and frowned at the four strangers seated around the table nursing cups of coffee.

Curtis and Coleman stood up. The last of the workmen they had been interviewing, two painters named Dobbs and Martinez, stayed put.

'I'm Detective Sergeant Curtis and this is Detective Coleman. You must be Mr Richardson.'

Coleman buttoned his jacket and clasped his hands in front of him as if he had been a guest at a wedding.

Ray Richardson nodded sullenly.

Curtis smiled broadly as the rest of the project team filed into the boardroom.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, 'I just need a little of your time. I know you're extremely busy, but as you probably know a man was killed in this building. I dare say most of you knew him. Now the fact of the matter is that we're no nearer to finding out what happened to him than we were then. So we'd like to ask each of you a few questions. It will only take a few moments.' He glanced at the painters.

'You two can go,' he said. 'And thanks.'

'This isn't very convenient, Sergeant,' said Richardson. 'Couldn't you do this some other time?'

'Well, sir, Mr Bryan said now would be OK.'

'I see,' Richardson said petulantly and threw his notes on to the table.

'And where exactly is Mr Bryan?'

'Search me,' said Curtis. 'He left about twenty mintues ago. I thought he'd gone to find you.'

Richardson decided to lose his temper. 'I don't believe this. I don't fucking believe this. Somebody with a criminal record gets himself murdered and you two characters expect me, my wife and my staff to give a few clues is that it?' He laughed bitterly. 'It's a joke.'

'It is not a joke,' said Curtis, who resented being described as a character. 'For your information, sir, it's a murder investigation. And I'm trying to save you time and publicity. Which is what I understood you wanted.'

Richardson glowered at him.

'Or else I can go down to City Hall, get a court order and have you all come down to New Parker Center and do it there. You're not the only one with good connections, Mr Richardson. I've got the DA on my side, not to mention due process of law, and I don't give a damn that you think this is some kind of joke. Nor do I care that you're trying to complete this eyesore of a building. Nor what it costs.' Curtis thought better of calling Richardson a bastard. 'This is the taking of a human life we're talking about here and I intend to find out how that happened. Is that clear?'

Richardson stood with both hands thrust deep into the pockets of his pants, his chin pointed belligerently at the policeman.

'How dare you speak to me like that,' he said. 'How dare you!'

Curtis was already waving his badge in the architect's face. 'This is how I dare, Mr Richardson. LAPD badge number 1812. Same as the goddamn overture, so you can remember it when you report me to my superiors, OK?'

'You can depend on it.'

Marty Birnbaum, the project manager, tried to defuse the situation.

'Perhaps we'd better just get on with it,' he interrupted smoothly. 'If you two officers would like to move next door, to the kitchen, you could ask your questions in there. Everyone else — take a seat. We can continue with our meeting and take turns leaving the room to speak to these two gentlemen.' He glanced at Curtis and raised his eyebrows.

'How does that sound?'

'That sounds fine, sir. Just fine.'

Then, seeing Declan Bennett appear in the doorway, Birnbaum thought it would be better to get rid of Richardson altogether. Less trouble that way.

'Ray, I could be wrong, but I don't believe you ever spoke to Sam Gleig, did you?'

Richardson was still standing with his hands in his pockets and looking like a disappointed child.

'No, Marty,' he said quietly, as if somehow a dream had been shattered. 'I never did.'

Coleman and Curtis exchanged a look.

'Well that figures,' murmured Coleman.

'Joan? Did you ever speak to him?'

'No,' she said. 'I never did either. I don't think I could even tell you what he looked like.'

The project team started to sit down.

'In that case there's not much point in your staying,' said Birnbaum. To Curtis, 'Mr and Mrs Richardson are flying to London tonight.'

'I guess it's been that kind of day,' said Curtis.

'You'd best get off to the airport, Ray. I'll wrap the meeting up. No need for you to stick it out. If that's all right with the sergeant?'

Curtis nodded and looked out of the window. He had no regrets about losing his temper, even if the guy did end up reporting him.

Richardson squeezed Birnbaum's elbow and started to gather his things off the table.

'Thanks, Marty,' he said. 'For that matter, thank you all. I'm proud of you. Every one of you has made a significant contribution to this project which I may say has been completed on time and on cost. That's just one of the reasons why our clients, both from the public and private sectors return again and again to us with new assignments. Because excellence in architecture — and don't let the philistines tell you any different: this is a magnificent building — excellence is more than a matter of mere design. It's about commercial triumph.'

Joan led a small ripple of applause and then, with Declan Bennett following them, she and her husband were gone.

'Well done, Marty,' said Aidan Kenny as the rest of the room let out an audible sigh of relief. 'You handled that very well. The man was fit to be tied.'

Birnbaurh shrugged. 'When Ray's in one of these moods, I just pretend he's one of my Dobermanns.'

Jenny helped Mitch to his feet.

'Are you OK? What happened? There's blood on your lip.'

Mitch held his lower jaw and shifted his hand on to his skull. Then he ran his tongue along his lip and winced as he tasted a raw cut inside his mouth.

'Bastard,' he mumbled flatly. 'Allen Grabel just decked me. He's gone crazy.'

'He hit you? Why?'

'I think he might have had something to do with the death of that security guard.' Mitch groaned and rolled his head on his shoulders. 'I don't suppose you saw him, did you? Guy who looks like someone on the nickel?'

'I haven't seen anyone. Come on. Let's go back upstairs and put something on that cut.'

They crossed the garage floor and stepped inside the elevator car.

'How's the ceremony coming along?'

'It's not.' Jenny told him about the mistake with the calendars.

'That figures,' said Mitch. 'Maybe you should read my horoscope. It's certainly not been my day. I wish I'd stayed home in bed.'

'Oh? With or without your wife?'

Mitch grinned painfully.

'What do you think?'

When everyone had gone from the poolside, Kay Killen removed her sodden underwear and swam naked. Her strong brown body showed the line of her tiny bikini, but this was not so pronounced that it indicated someone who would never have gone topless on a beach. Kay was not the bashful type.

Tiny quantitites of urine, perspiration, cosmetics, dead skin, pubic hair and other ammonium compounds floated free of Kay's fluid body. Where water containing these pollutants passed through the circulation system it was brought into contact with ozone before being returned to the pool.

She first noticed the gas as a small cloud of grey-yellow vapour drifting across the pool towards her; she assumed that someone had come on to the pool deck, someone smoking a cigar or a pipe. Only the cloud seemed too low on the water to have been puffed there by the lungs of some unseen and voyeuristic spectator. Covering her ample breasts with her forearms Kay stood up and instinctively started to back away from the noxious-looking cloud. Then she turned and started to swim away from it, towards the ladder.

She was half out of the pool when the odour of the gas caught her nostrils. And by then it had also caught her lungs. The cloud enveloped her and suddenly she could no longer catch her breath. A violent pain —

the most violent pain she had ever known — filled her chest and she collapsed, gasping, on to the pool deck.

Even as she realized that somehow she had been gassed she began to expectorate quantities of blood-stained froth, but this afforded her no relief. It only made the pain worse. She felt as if she wanted to cough up the entire contents of her heaving chest.

If there had been anything but chlorine gas in her dyspnoeic lungs she might have screamed.

Kay crawled on her hands and knees along the poolside.

If only she could reach some fresh air.

With a supreme effort she got to her feet and blindly staggered forwards. But instead of getting to the door she collapsed into the water, next to the open outlet valve and another, even stronger cloud of chlorine gas.

For a moment she struggled to keep her head above the water, until the water itself seemed to soothe her burning lungs and she struggled no more.

In the elevator Ray Richardson swore revenge.

'I'm going to get that asshole,' he snarled. 'Did you hear the way he spoke to me?'

'You've got his badge number,' said Joan. 'I think you should take him at his word and report him, Ray. 1812, wasn't it?'

'1812. Who the hell does he think he is? I'll write him an overture he'll never forget. Dedicated to his fucking superior. With cannons.'

'Better still, why not call Morgan Phillips at City Hall.'

'You're right. I'll break that arrogant bastard. He'll wish he'd never got out of bed this morning.'

The elevator doors opened. Declan opened the Bentley's doors for them and then jumped into the driver's seat.

'How's the traffic, Declan?'